


bigmouth strikes again

by dothraloki



Category: Veep
Genre: Love/Hate, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 17:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4109239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dothraloki/pseuds/dothraloki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And then – as if he sensed that his lack of presence was the only thing Dan was taking solace in - Jonah comes strolling in, shit-eating grin painted on his face, hands in his pockets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bigmouth strikes again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rillrill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/gifts).



When it first happens, it takes him by surprise.

Another day, another fuck up. Dan's in one of the little side rooms a convenient distance away from the Oval Office, and most importantly, Selina, phone in his hand, whisper-yelling at Mike and watching the tweets flood in.

“Fucking hell. You were supposed to firefight this situation – with facts and fucking talent, not with your own fucking piss,” he's saying, and oh God, BuzzFeed have it. There's going to be memes, he just knows it.

“So what am I supposed to do? There's some shit that can't be shoveled, Dan.”

“Then what the fuck are you here for?”

“This isn't my fault. This is - if anything you should be talking to Gary, not me.”

Dan glares over at Gary who's rocking back and forth, head in his hands. “Yeah, well unfortunately, it's kind of difficult to have a conversation with the human equivalent of a wet sponge.”

Kent walks in not long after, expression cool-neutral like the fucking cyborg he is, barely an ounce of urgency in his voice when he tells them this is a fuck up rivaling roughly the size of Hindenburg, and then Ben comes in, flustered and angry enough for both of them, and threatens to start cutting off dicks.

The room gets smaller in smaller, and the stress levels rises until he's drowning in a sea of frantic phone-calls and text messages. He runs his hands through his hair enough times that he feels himself start to go bald, and his heart is going a mile a minute against his ribcage. Amy's yelling at him, and then Mike, and then him and Mike together, and then – as if he sensed that his lack of presence was the only thing Dan was taking solace in - Jonah comes strolling in, shit-eating grin painted on his face, hands in his pockets.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Dan says tersely, barely looking up from the screen of his phone.

Jonah whistles low. “Well, haven't you got a case of explosive diarrhea on your hands?”

“This really isn't the time, Jonad. But I don't need to tell you that, you have fucking eyes, don't you?”

Jonah shrugs. “I just thought, being a man of the internet – and this being, you know, mainly an internet-based disaster...” he lets his sentence die away, and Dan stares up at him.

“You'd do that?”

“Fuck no. You made me denounce the internet, remember?” he pats him on the cheek. “I just came to gloat.”

Something snaps inside him, something minute and a second later he has Jonah pushed up against the wall, head smacking against concrete. His fingers twist the fabric of Jonah's oversized sweater and it reminds him of before– when he'd done the same thing outside the studios before Jonah's shitty interview, he remembers the sick pleasure twisting down his spine, the way Jonah had just gone limp – just accepted it. Here though – now though, Jonah's expression isn't fearful or even startled but expectant, and his mouth his curled into that awful leery smirk he wears so often and Dan doesn't even have time to parse it before Ben's pulling him away and telling him to cool himself down “for the love of God, you fucking zoo animal.”

He does. Cool it down. Kent forces Jonah out of the room with a couple of stern words that make him turn pale and high-tail it the fuck out of there, but there's still adrenaline coursing through Dan's veins long after Jonah's presumably vacated the premises. In the end, he sorts it. Or it sorts itself out. Whichever. He doesn't even remember and it doesn't even matter because at the end of the day, he gets to go home with his job safe and his dick intact.

It's only when he's checking his emails as he gets into bed, firing back answers even though it's 2am just to stay ahead of the game; the third is from Gary titled “URGENT: DELAWARE ARRANGEMENTS FOR THIS MORNING” and Dan gives it barely a cursory glance before sending it straight to the spam folder. God. How that fucking human beanpole had gotten a hold of his business-personal email address he'll never know.

The fourth is from Jonah, and all too quickly he's remembering the crack of his head against the wall, the dopey, easy grin on his face –

He tries not to think of it. He doesn't particularly _like_ thinking about it, because then it becomes a _thing_ and Dan already has enough things on his plate. On several plates in fact. Like a whole fucking shitload of plates.

*

Amy asks him, the next morning when he rolls into work with his $7 shitty tasting coffee, in no uncertain words whether he's going to be a actual fucking professional today or going to pitch another shitfit like a toddler having a tantrum.

“See this is what I like about you,” he says. “The fact that I never know what the fuck you're talking about – did you get that memo from Doyle, by the way?”

Amy rolls her eyes, Dan pretends not see it, and that's it. Awkward conversation over.

Except now he's actually paying attention to it. He can't just dismiss it as background noise, the way he had for the last five years, not now Amy's shone the fucking torch with the power of a million candles on it.

He scans through Kent's bland, nondescript email, attention wavering. See, there's this whole back-and-forth thing, where every time he finds himself in another screaming match with Jonah he feels like he's gearing up to _do_ something, and he's not sure what it is – and maybe that's the most frustrating thing about it. He'd be lying if he said he didn't get some small joy out of it though, the constancy of the yelling and the threatening and the cursing- that instantly, he always knows where he is with Jonah, there's none of that pretense, none of that falsehood about it. It's weirdly simple.

It happens again not a week later, they're up in each other's faces about the disaster that had been the East Village speech, and Jonah's towering over him with his fucking gargantuan body and Dan's leaning into his space, finger tapping his chest with the emphasis of every biting word that comes out of his mouth.

“You fucking waste of bone marrow,” he hisses, quiet, careful not to attract unwanted attention from Sue and Kent. “Do you even have one thought in that vacuum of a head? Or is the need to constantly fuck up innate? Like a fucking insect?"

Jonah's laugh is low, and tinged with something gritty. “Well, A: that's just a straight up lie. I'm crushing it every single day of my life.”

“Yeah? This you crushing it now?”

Jonah narrows his eyes. “Fuck you, Dan.”

“Fuck _you._ ” He's craning his neck up to meet Jonah's gaze and there's that sick pleasure again, that feeling like he wants to do _something_ and he can see it in Jonah too, in the rigidity of his posture and the tightening of his jaw – then Selina's intro music comes over the P.A system and Dan's attention snaps back to the monitor above as he prays to God that Mike's handled that fucking useless bag of air from _The New Yorker._

Amy asks him later, much later, as she sips her coffee without taking her eyes off her laptop screen, she doesn't specify but he knows she's talking about Jonah when she says: “Why don't you ever just tell him to go blow himself?”

Dan huffs out a breath. “Like that would ever work.”

“It does for me,” she says. “But sure, take the road less traveled or whatever, I guess.”

Dan looks up from his phone. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh no, I'm not getting into this with you since, y'know, this isn't the seventh grade,” she pauses, fingers tapping hastily on the keyboard. “But I think you know what it means.”

The annoying thing is, Dan knows exactly what it means.

*

 

There was that time a few of years ago.

It had been as close to a fucking functioning relationship as it'd ever gotten, or maybe it had just been a friendship. Dan had never, to tell the truth, truly been able to distinguish the difference. There had of course been the fact Dan was cynically using him and it had been unbearable, really, the simpering, ass-kissing act - and too easy, far too fucking easy, to just bat his eyelashes and say whatever the fuck that numbskull had wanted to hear. A couple of days in Dan had had the ground-breaking realization that if he'd wanted to – if he'd really turned on the charm, something could've happened. Obviously nothing had, obviously that would've been a step too far over the fucking line, even for him, but Dan had thought it was interesting, he'd banked it away in the Rolodex of his brain marked 'to consider later' and got on with the task at hand.

Then there had been that time in the bar, where he'd been hammered off his fucking tits. The time Amy had brought her chinless asshole concubine. The edges of the room felt spiky, and he was off his game, and he'd remembered Jonah's solid presence like a fucking brick wall next to him. Jonah laughing too hard at his jokes, and leaning in, a little too familiar – a little too close. When Amy had dragged Simon, or Evan or whoever the fuck, back home with her and the bar had steadily emptied, and he and Jonah had loosened their ties, and half-slurred insults at one another. He remembers feeling that 'to consider later' file open, like someone else was in command and being suddenly aware that Something Could Happen. And then he'd glimpsed the clock on the wall, and realized he was supposed to be up in four hours time and left Jonah to pay for the tab.

Amy's right – and obviously, he'd rather put a bullet in his brain than admit it – there are better ways of shutting Jonah down – ways that are neater, quicker. Dan's done it to a hundred little faceless nobodies that had gotten a little too fucking cocky, a little too big for their fucking boots.

And yet.

He fucking hates doing this – analyzing things, questioning things. He's a shallow guy and he's always been proud of that. He's never been the type for to play freshman psychology student and analyse his reasons for doing things - but he thinks there's something addictive about it, fucking with Jonah, because he keeps doing it.

“Fucking Jonad,” he sighs.

 

*

To be fair, Dan had sensed trouble right from the outset.

For a start it had been a snippy morning. Jonah and his sidekick Richard's dumbass double-act was grating at the best of times, but with Kent and Bill  breathing down his neck and a media cock-up to fix, they were in a whole new ballpark. By midday he'd already told Jonah to “shut that fucking cavern of a mouth of yours or I will shut it for you.” By the time his phone had gone off at six, he felt like driving into the middle of the woods and screaming at the sky until his voice went hoarse.

The evening event, though, that's his time to decompress. It's a real black tie thing with chandeliers and vintage wine that costs more than his mom's fucking mortgage, and Dan's kitted out in his second best suit and hanging around the back of the hall talking shit to rich campaigners. It's something he's good at, charming people. He's got it down to a science – the way he can smile at people just enough to come off friendly, trustworthy but not overbearing, the way he spills vacuous compliments until he has them eating out the palm of his hand. God he's good.

An hour and a half in, he spots Amy over the shoulder of some cretin from Johnson & Johnson, barreling across the hall, her eyes are doing the panicky wide-thing that gives him Pavolivan style palpitations. He excuses himself just as Amy grabs him by the arm and says by way of introduction: “That clip got out and The Washington are going to run with it.”

“Fucking shit on my grave,” he groans. “Does Selina -?”

“No,” she says.“And she's not going to, because Burgess is here, down somewhere in the lobby and I don't care what you do, if it's voodoo black magic, I don't give a shit. Just make sure he doesn't go with it.”

“Yeah,” he says, phone already in hand as he makes his way to the door.

“And take Jonad with you.”

He pauses mid-stride and turns back to her, expression pleading.

“He's a liability up here,” Amy shrugs and nods over to where Jonah's stood, leaning uncomfortably close to a bored looking woman. “Plus isn't his stupid fucking uncle connected somehow?”

“Probably,” he says, resigned. “God, you owe me big time for this.”

Amy nods, and totters off briskly, heels clipping the polished floor. Dan watches her for a couple of moments, steeling himself, before grabbing a flute of champagne from a nearby tray and downing it in one.

“Skeletor!" he clicks his fingers and points at the door. "Come the fuck here.”

*

The thing is – the problem is, while Dan has long since learned how to tune out Jonah's inane chatter to resemble a sort of peaceful radio static, there's a unique combination of time pressure plus impending doom plus Jonah that manages to pierce through his bubble of quiet calm, and Dan remembers that not ten minutes later, when they reach the foyer to find it suspiciously Burgess-less.

A quick conversation with the inept, mousy-looking guy behind the reception desk, and then with a much more knowledgeable woman with an incredible bouffant tells him that Burgess had been dragged away, apparently to complete negotiations on an important partnership deal, and all at once Dan sees his entire career flash before his eyes.

“Shit,” Dan says before catching himself and nodding to the bouffant woman. “I mean, thanks.” Jonah guffaws loudly next to him and he can already feel his blood pressure rising as he strides away towards the stairwall, hastily shooting a text to Amy. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“You know what's incredible about this situation?” says Jonah, rushing to keep up with him.

Dan holds up a hand. “If you start, I swear to God I'm going to gut you like a fucking trout.”

Jonah ignores him. “You keep saying how me and Richard are, like, inept, or whatever. But you can't even catch a man,” he pauses, as if considering it. “An old man. A pensioner, really.”

Dan grits his teeth.

“I mean, if this is you on your A-Game, your _Dan-the-man I'm-so-fucking-professional-and-great at-everything_ game, then buddy, I hate to break it to you -”

“You know what?” he bursts. “This actually isn't helping, like it's not conducive to this situation at-fucking-all. So here's an idea, jam up that face cavity of yours and then I won't have to kill you.”

“Oh but Danny,” Jonah shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. “Who says I was trying to help?”

“Okay,” says, Dan, and makes his mind up in a second. “Okay,” and then with sudden force, catching Jonah unawares, he's pushing him roughly into one of the empty, adjacent storerooms and following in behind him. It's musky, and it smells of stale cabbage, and Jonah's stood there, expression set into that trademark arrogant grin.

Dan wants to wipe it off.

“You stupid fucking ape - you realize how politics works, don't you? We're on the same fucking team. Or did I travel back in time, somehow?”

“What do you mean “we're on the same team?” Jonah looks indignant. “When have we ever been on the same fucking team?”

Dan blinks. “We are both employed under the Meyer Administration, Jonah.”

“That means fuck-all and you know it. Just because I don't work for Maddox anymore doesn't mean we're suddenly playing for the same team.”

Dan scoffs. “Well, you've sure got that one right.”

Jonah narrows his eyes.“What's that supposed to mean?”

Dan raises an eyebrow. “Surely you can work that one out for yourself,” he says. “Look, fucking – regardless of whatever you have against me, surely you don't want to see Selina fall, right? Even if it's to cover your own ass.”

“Look who's come over all _West Wing,”_ Jonah smirks. “Selina isn't going to stop being president because of some stupid leaked voicemail - ”

“So you do actually understand what's happening here then – "

Jonah leans in a little closer. “But, in the the meantime, I get to watch you squirm.”

Now it's Dan's turn to smile, not a friendly one – one that underlines the hatred coiling in his gut. “You know, I'm beginning to think you're a little obsessed with me Jonah.”

There's something in Jonah's eyes, indefinable – anger maybe, or maybe a challenge. “Blow it out of your ass, Dan.”

There's a moment, a silence that stretches out thin and tense, all Dan knows they're on the precipice of something, something big, but he can't really think about that now – not when Jonah's standing here smug and self-satisfied – not when more than anything, Dan wants to fucking destroy him.

In one fluid motion, he's grabbing Jonah by his shitty kid's Gap tie and pulling him down to kiss him. It's not a nice kiss either – it's not the way he'd kiss if he was trying to impress or seduce or persuade, it's a kiss that feels like a fight. Like this is an extension of that argument. There's a moment were Jonah is frozen, startled – Dan's not going to lie, he's reveling in the ability to literally render Jonah dumbstruck - but then Jonah's kissing back, giving as good as he's getting and Jesus Christ, Dan had always suspected – always thought, if it ever came to this, it would be good. Never _this_ good though.

There are teeth dragging on his bottom lip, and a tongue in his mouth, and already he's pawing off Jonah's oversized suit jacket as he backs him into a shelf, a cupboard, a wall. All reservations he has about this – and he has a fucking lot – seem to dissipate the moment Jonah shifts his knee against his groin and he lets out a slight gasp against Jonah's jaw. “I fucking hate you.” 

“God, shut the fuck up” comes the distracted reply, an octave lower than normal, and then a slight whimper as Dan sucks the skin there, forming the start of a brilliant blue bruise. “Jesus Christ, Dan.”

“Don't tell me to shut the fuck up,” he says simply. There are fingers tugging his shirt out of his pants, unbuckling his belt, and his mouth goes dry. He – they - should've done this sooner, he thinks, not with much clarity admittedly, as Jonah rubs circles on his hipbone. It feels like everything's dying away – the urgency of the situation, the fact for that for all intents and purposes, they are in a very public setting, and God did he even lock the door? He doesn't care, he can't care, not when Jonah's fingers are dipping beneath the waistband of his boxers.

“You know, I knew you had a fucking thing for me, Jonah.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?” Jonah's grips him suddenly, stroking him with kind of single-minded focus that has Dan's vision faltering a little, and he hates that – he hates that Jonah is inexplicably quite good at this, especially when he adds, smugness audible in his voice and with an indicative twist of his hand. “- because you seem to have a thing for me too.”

Dan sucks in a harsh breath, eyes fluttering closed. “God - you are just – fucking - insufferable.”

“And that's the way you like it, isn't it Danny?” Jonah says.

The pace of his hand speeds up, and Dan mouth opens, heat coiling in his gut. His whole body feels warm, and he can feel Jonah rocking against his thigh. “If you – _shit_ – if fucking stop, I'll set you on fucking fire.”

Instead Jonah shifts a bit to change the angle, sucking kisses along the bared line of Dan's neck, and Dan's coming in waves with a half-mangled " _God,_ "  head dropping to press against Jonah's chest.

He recovers after a couple of moments and stands back, glancing up at a wrecked-looking Jonah who's tie lies askew, lips bitten and red – and Dan, in a rare moment of post-coital weakness, takes pity on him.

“Listen, asshole,” he begins, already beginning to unbuckle him. “You're going to hurry the fuck up, unless you want Amy to come looking for us.”

Jonah nods, strangely quiescent as Dan shucks his underwear down, wrapping a hand around him. If he had more time, he'd really work his way up to it, steadily, slowly, taking his time, really fucking destroy him. He's conscious of the time pressure though, and so firm and quick will have to do – not that Jonah seems put out by it at all. He's got a vacant, glazed expression on his face, breath coming fast.

“Is this is what you hoped for every time you've provoked me into one of your dumbass arguments?”

Jonah shakes his head, rendering silent by the incessant pace of Dan's hand.

“This what you've fantasized about? Huh? Me getting so angry I give you a fucking handjob?”

“Fuck you, Dan,” Jonah says weakly. Dan smiles into the side of his neck.

Jonah's hands are clutching at nothing, and hips losing the rhythm. Dan drops his voice a little lower. “You gonna come?”

Jonah bites his lip, head falling against the cabinet.

“Come on Jonah,” he says, and he does, inelegantly and inarticulately and Dan strokes him through it until Jonah finally steadies himself against the cabinet, hair beginning to curl up at the back of his neck.

“Uh,” he says, a couple of moments later, and he's blinking like he's just emerged from the dark.

“Now obviously,” Dan begins, somewhat conversationally as he fixes up his clothes, restyles his hair. “I don't need to tell you that you do not breathe a fucking word of this, unless you want to wake up with a horse's head in your bed. Ca-fucking-piche?”

“So that's fucking it?” Jonah pushes himself off the cabinet and tucks himself back in, buckling up his belt. “You're gonna act like you didn't just have your hand on my dick thirty seconds ago.”

“Yep,” says Dan, straightening his jacket, he turns around, a smirk on his face and leer in his voice. “And you will too, if you know what's good for you.”

Jonah looks up at him, sharply. “Wait does that mean - ?”

“It means exactly what I fucking just said,” says Dan, pulling the handle of the door. “Give it five minutes.”

*

He wakes up the next morning with a hangover that feels as if someone is drilling directly into his skull.

Those whiskeys, he reflects, had definitely been a mistake, but when it doubt, or perhaps more aptly: when had failed to fix a major fuck up; when even after the endless phone-calls, even after essentially stalking some powerful media mogul asshole halfway across DC he'd only made things monumentally worse; when essentially his career was in the shitter, there was only really one solution – get fucked up. That had been the decree he'd lived his life by and he'd be damned if he was going to forget it now.

He grapples for his phone automatically, scrolling through his texts before he's barely even opened his eyes, wondering what the hell he was going to tell Selina – wondering, with a certain detached interest, how he's going to handle being fired for the second goddamn time in less than a year.

His thumb pauses over the newest message – from Jonah, and the only thing in the description is a link to the The Washington Post frontpage website. “You fucking bastard,” he mutters to himself, but opens it anyway, braced for the inevitable onslaught.

Except.

Nothing.

Not a fucking thing.

Well, some things; minor league embarrassing stuff about Chung, a bunch of shit about a weed farm in Montana. Nothing about Selina, nothing about her disastrous rant. What the fuck.

A second text comes in from Jonah a moment later. He opens it, a frown on his face.

_From: Scrotum Pole_

_YOU'RE FUCKIN WELCOME_

_-J._

 


End file.
